It's been a beautiful June. I've been gorging myself on asparagus and strawberries, dining outside, going for long country walks and bike rides and sunning myself in the garden - bliss.
I made these muffins this morning, for an al fresco breakfast. The strawberries were some that I had left in the fridge and were slightly past their best for eating normally. The buttermilk was also left over from a chocolate cake I made earlier in the week so satisfyingly, I was able to use that too.
The muffins smelled wonderful as they were baking, the strawberries giving that heady, jammy perfume. The taste was exceptional, sweet and moist, balanced with a lovely acidity from the orange zest.
As this recipe neatly used up some old strawberries and buttermilk, I'm sending this off to the No Waste Food Challenge. It's being hosted by Michelle of Utterly Scrummy Food for Families on behalf of Elizabeth's Kitchen.
I'm also sending this off to Four Seasons Food over at The Spicy Pear where the theme is the Colour Red this month. It's normally hosted over at Delicieux or Eat Your Veg.Finally, I'm pleased to be entering it into a new challenge, Bake of the Week over at Casa Costello.
RECIPE
225g plain flour
160g caster sugar
2 and a quarter teaspoons baking powder
half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
half a teaspoon of salt
250ml buttermilk
55g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
grated zest of one orange
1 egg, beaten
about 130g fresh strawberries, roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a muffin tin with paper liners.
Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb of soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix together. I add the chopped strawberries at this point too because I found that if I added them last of all, they didn't mix in as well. Adding them at this stage means that they are evenly dispersed throughout the muffins.
In a separate bowl, mix together the buttermilk, melted butter, orange zest, and egg. Make a hole in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients in. Mix with a fork just until blended, being careful not to over mix. With a standard ice-cream scoop or a large spoon, scoop the batter into the prepared cases, filling them almost full.
Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown.
